Motorola Atrix 4G: Laptop Dock Demo & Unboxing

The Motorola Atrix laptop dock is one of the biggest selling points of the new phone, but is it really as exciting as it looks?

When the Atrix was introduced last month at CES (Consumer Electronics Show), not only was the phone itself one of the most talked about items due its dual-core power, but the Atrix laptop dock also got its fair share of love as well.

We got to spend some time with the dock at CES, and while it impressed us on first glance, getting it into a real world environment is always going to change things. Overall we still find the operating system to be elegant to look at, the keys responsive - albeit scaled down - and a fairly build all around, but yet we are still left going, "why?"

The dock has no brain of its own, so it is only usable when the phone is plugged in to it. If you're going to carry around something of that size with you, shouldn't it at least have its own brain that the phone somehow enhances? If you're going to carry around something that large, why go with underpowered when you could carry a tablet, netbook or an actual laptop? Yes, there is a definite cool factor to it, but the first time you try to do something resource intensive, you're going to suddenly remember you're really using a smartphone, dual-core powered or not.

You can buy it bundled with the phone through AT&T for $499, although Radio Shack is selling the bundle for $479 currently, which works the dock out to being about the price of a decent netbook.

We'll be doing a complete walk through of the device fairly soon, so be sure to keep checking back.